Speak

In Stanza 1, the speaker’s announcement that he can only speak in a “flat voice” (Line 1)—a voice devoid of emotion—suggests that he is downcast or deflated about something and unable to put any effort into expressing himself. The next lines provide a clue to his situation. He has been searching for someone, having “gone every place / Asking for you” (Lines 3-4). He does not yet inform the reader that the “you” he addresses is God; the lowercase version of the pronoun is one way to keep this information obfuscated. The speaker has been wondering how his search would turn out and how it would end, but he is now at the end of the road. In a metaphor that, with knowledge of the rest of the poem, clearly refers to God, he likens the situation to having a streetlight “spin” (Line 7) somewhere above him but being “blind” (Line 8) and unable to perceive it.

In Stanza 2, the speaker reflects on a well-known passage from the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes, which in the King James version reads, “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all” (